Law and Psychology Commons^™

Psychosomatic Injury, Traumatic Psychoneurosis, And Law, Paul David Cantor

Cleveland State Law Review

This paper deals with court decisions on liability claims for injuries to the mind rather than for broken bones alone. This subject now is as important to practitioners and students of the law as it long has been to medical men. Much medical knowledge is now reflected in new interpretations by the courts, so that today the legal fact is established that a person's emotional security as well as his physical security must be protected and compensated. The author's purpose is to focus attention on the developments of recent years as well as those of earlier times, and to demonstrate …

Mental Competency And Mental Hospitals, Ewing H. Crawfis

Cleveland State Law Review

Psychiatrists generally are aware that there is not necessarily any relation between competency and hospitalization for mental illness. The consensus seems to be that these two things should be considered entirely separately. Many patients may need mental hospital care, without having suffered any impairment of their competency. My personal estimate is that 75% of all patients admitted to the average mental hospital could be considered to be competent. Also, it is well to keep in mind that an individual may require a guardian because of incompetency due to a mental disorder, but not require hospitalization in a mental hospital. Unfortunately, …

Conversion Hysteria - An Explanation For Attorneys, Ewing H. Crawfis

Cleveland State Law Review

Conversion Hysteria is a diagnostic term used by physicians and particularly in one specialty of medicine-namely psychiatry. Attorneys encounter this term as it is applied to certain individuals who come to them in the course of their practice particularly in cases involving personal injury and claims for compensation. This paper is being presented in an effort to explain and clarify this diagnostic term for attorneys.

Constitutional Law - Due Process - Notice Required To Validate Tax Foreclosure Of Property Of Known Mental Incompetent, Frank M. Lacey S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

On May 8, 1952, the town of Somers instituted an action to foreclose a number of tax liens. One of these was upon the property owned by a person known in the community to be a mental incompetent, but who had not yet been so certified by a court. Notice was given to the incompetent taxpayer in compliance with the statute by mail, posting, and publication. When she failed to answer within the prescribed period, foreclosure was entered and a deed to her property delivered to the town. Five days later she was declared a person of unsound mind, and …

Constitutional Law - Criminal Law - Power Of Federal Government To Commit Mentally Incompetent Persons Charged With Federal Crimes, William C. Becker S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Petitioner was indicted for robbery from a United States Post Office. After a series of hearings and examinations, the district court found petitioner so mentally incompetent that he could not stand trial, and that, if released, he would probably endanger the safety of the officers, property, or other interests of the United States. The district court ordered petitioner committed to the custody of the Attorney General for confinement in a mental institution. This order was affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, one judge dissenting. On certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States, held, …

Involuntary Psychiatry In Nova Scotia: The Review Board Reports (1979-1983) And Recent Proposals For Legislative Change, H Archibald Kaiser

Dalhousie Law Journal

The Nova Scotia Psychiatric Facilities Review Board, appointed under s. 53 of the Hospitals Act1, fulfils many vital functions affecting the treatment and liberty of the patient involuntarily confined in the psychiatric hospitals of the Province.2 Although its proceedings are held in camera,3 the Board fortunately publishes an Annual Report which is tabled in the House of Assembly.4 Neither lay persons aor lawyers are likely to scrutinize these documents and this Comment is intended in part to redress this regrettable disregard as well as to offer some critical remarks. They contain material which will both hearten and disturb the reader, …

Evidence - Physician - Patient Privilege - Applicability To Communication Between State Mental Hospital Psychiatrist And Criminal Internee, Norman A. Zilber S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Defendant was committed to a public mental hospital before standing trial on an indictment for robbery. One year later he was brought to trial after being discharged from the hospital as mentally competent. His only defense was insanity. The psychiatrist who had been appointed by the court to examine the defendant testified in support of this defense. The prosecution, in turn, introduced the testimony of the hospital psychiatrist who had attended the defendant during his internment. This psychiatrist was instructed by the trial court that communications between him and the defendant were not privileged. Accordingly, he testified that the defendant …

Psychiatry And Criminal Responsibility, Jerome Hall

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Responsibility And Law: In Defense Of The Mcnaghten Rules, Jerome Hall

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Responsibility: A Psychiatrist's Point Of View, M. A. Sklansky

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Responsibility: A Psychologist's Point Of View, Richard L. Blanton

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Petrazycki: Law And Morality, William R. Jentes S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law and Mortality. By Leon Petrazycki

Psychiatry And Public Policy, George H. Dession

Buffalo Law Review

This address was given on the occasion of the 1954 Convocation of the Washington School of Psychiatry on October 16, 1954, at the Statler Hotel, Washington, D. C. This article is reprinted from PSYCHIATRY: JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF INTERPERSONAL PROCESSES, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Feb. 1955), pp. 1-8, with the gracious permission of the Editor.

Due Process Rights Of Mentally Ill Parents In Nonconsensual Adoptions

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Weihofen: Mental Disorder As A Criminal Defense, Winfred Overholser M.D.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Mental Disorder as a Criminal Defense. By Henry Weihofen.

Criminal Law - Reexamination Of Tests For Criminal Responsibility, Mary Lee Ryan

Michigan Law Review

Criminal law in the Anglo-American system of jurisprudence is based upon the concept that persons should be held responsible for their acts. A strong corrollary to this idea is that certain types of persons, namely the "insane," should not be held responsible for criminal conduct. Although this proposition seems beautifully simple, courts in England and the United States for over a hundred years have wrestled with the problem of what constitutes insanity, or, to phrase it more accurately, what type of mental condition should preclude responsibility for a criminal act.

Criminal Responsibility And Mental Disorder: New Approaches To An Old Problem

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Psychology Of The Criminal Act And Punishment, By Gregory Zilboorg, Henry Weihoffen

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Hospitalization Of The Voluntary Mental Patient, Hugh A. Ross

Michigan Law Review

In 1949, the last year for which accurate statistics are available, 390,567 persons were admitted to mental hospitals in the United States. Total annual cost of mental illness, including loss of earnings, has been estimated to be over a billion dollars a year. Although the problems involved in admission of the mentally ill patient to a hospital are usually thought of in terms of formal involuntary commitment proceedings, there is an increasing awareness of the desirability of provision for voluntary procedures which would encourage prompt and effective medical care. Voluntary admission is not a form of commitment, although it may …

Constitutional Law - Due Process - Judicial Review Of Jury Determination On Coerced Character Of Confession, James M. Potter S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Petitioner, suspected of the murder of his parents, was subjected to intensive police interrogation culminating in a confession to a state-employed psychiatrist. Petitioner had been allowed only a small amount of sleep and was suffering from a sinus condition when he was introduced to the psychiatrist, who was represented as a general practitioner. The questioning of the psychiatrist, who was skilled in hypnosis, was a subtle blend of threats and promises of leniency. Within the next three and one-half hours petitioner also confessed to a police captain, a business associate, and two assistant state prosecutors. The confession to the psychiatrist …

Torts - Liability Of Physician Erroneously Certifying Insanity, Richard Z. Rosenfeld

Michigan Law Review

A physician certified plaintiff to be insane, when in fact she was sane; she was thereafter committed to a state sanitarium. Upon her release, she sued the physician for negligence in examination. Defendant's demurrer for failure to state a cause of action was sustained. On appeal, held, affirmed. Quoting almost the entirety of an analogous 1900 decision from the same jurisdiction, the court held that defendant had owed no duty to plaintiff. Because the administration of the law "should not be obstructed by the fears of physicians that they may render themselves liable to suit," certifying physicians "should be …

Special Statutory Treatment For Sexual Psychopaths, J. A. Guzzetta

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Lawyer Looks At Psychiatry And The Law, Alfred L. Gausewitz

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Psychiatrist Looks At Psychiatry And The Law, Fredric Wertham

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Guttmacher & Weihofen: Psychiatry And The Law., Morris Ploscowe

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Psychiatry and the Law. By Manfred. S. Guttmacher and Henry Weihofen.

Psychiatry And The Law -- A Dual Review, Jerome Hall, Karl Menninger

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Psychiatry And The Law, Marlyn E. Lugar

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Hospitalizing The Mentally Ill, Henry Weihofen

Michigan Law Review

It is hard for lawyers and doctors to see eye to eye on the fundamental problem of how to eliminate needless legalistic formality in hospitalization procedures and at the same time maintain adequate legal safeguards against error and abuse.

Lawyers are inclined to emphasize the need to guard against "railroading" sane persons into institutions without giving them a chance to prove their sanity. They therefore stress the importance of a fair trial, with adequate notice and a chance to be heard before being deprived of one's liberty. As a special committee of the American Bar Association said a few years …

Book Review. Durkheim, E., Suicide -- A Study In Sociology, Jerome Hall

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law - ''Temporary Insanity" -Arguments And Proposals For Its Elimination As A Defense To Criminal Prosecution, Lewis R. Williams, Jr. S. Ed.

Michigan Law Review

ln view of the apparently increasing number of cases which have come before the courts in recent years in which the defense of "temporary insanity" has been made, an investigation into the status of that defense in the criminal law of today would seem desirable. The term "temporary insanity" is one of popular origin and finds no place in strict legal terminology. The defense of incapacity for the mens rea, legally speaking, is "insanity," not "temporary insanity." But because of the human desire for a mot convenable, we have come to apply the term "temporary insanity" to those …